The NASA Europe Challenge is a yearly comptetion of applications of
the digital globe "World Wind". A student team of the Master course
Photogrammetry and Geoinformatics of HFT Stuttgart participated the
challenge and has been invited to Helsinki as one the the best six
project contributions. They have been awarded with the first price
in the category "collaboration with other teams".

The students were invited to a five-day program, where they
presented their project and exchanged with other teams. The
challenge was to find innovative solutions that make life easier
and more sustainable. With regard to living in urban areas, this
meant to meet the concept of "smart city" and to take advantage of
the increasing networking and the availability of real-time data.
The solutions should include spatial analysis visualized using NASA
and ESA's "WorldWind" virtual globe.

The HFT team, consisting of Joe Thunyathep Santhanavanich,
Giuliano Baumann, Patrick Würstle, Thilo Pfalzgraf and Prof. Dr.
Volker Coors as mentor, has launched the web application "Smart
Pollen Monitoring". The application show visualizations of the
dispersal of pollen from allergenic trees. What is special about
this is the representation of the pollen dispersal directly from
each tree by means of real-time data on wind information. The
application was still in the test stage and offered rooms for
extensions, but it has already provided insights to which future
applications can build.

Finally, with hard work and good collaboration with other teams
in the event, they have received the collaboration prize in the
NASA Europe challenge.

The students said: "This event was an interesting experience and
in addition to the insight into the forge of the Finnish space
program, the University of Aalto, especially the interaction with
all the different participants of the other teams remained in
memory."